A very important feature for me is syncing with my .mac account. I want to use it at home and work. This is huge and iGTD does it.

[RiK]

Originally Posted by bepmail

A very important feature for me is syncing with my .mac account. I want to use it at home and work. This is huge and iGTD does it.

Seconded. I've not actually got my hands on OF yet but this would be essential for me moving from desktop to laptop frequently.

[jelmore]

Likes:
Easy to get into and easy to shuffle tasks and projects around. Very intuitive.

Dislikes:
1) I agree that the Filter/View ribbon at the top of the page doesn't have the right UI, it feels like it should be column headings.
2) There are a lot of little behaviors that make it appear as if OmniFocus is losing tasks or projects, or can cause a user to have to enter things twice; with a program that is devoted to capturing, I need to have faith that it's getting everything. Examples include:
* The search bar should clear itself when you change focus or switch views, so people don't end up unintentionally hiding stuff.
* Using the Add Action (Ctrl-Cmd-N) function in Project View doesn't do anything when you do not have a Project selected.
* If you hit the Delete key one time too many in the Quick Entry box, it deletes the new task and there's no way to get it back without closing and reopening the Quick Entry box.
3) The more I think about it, the more I dislike the new Quick Entry function that allows you to skip the Inbox and drop Tasks directly into a Context or Project, and hope the original behavior is the default. The capturing stage and the processing stage are not the same thing, and you can bog yourself down if you find yourself wrestling with what context or project a quick entry needs to be in.

[strongmace]

I sent this in via the feedback link, but figured I might as well post it here too in case it helps to spur some discussion. Note: I did make some changes to this body of text since sending it in.

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I would really appreciate an option in the preferences to enable column headings to stay visible. I understand that there has been some debate about this in the past on the OmniFocus forums. To me, having a checkbox to enable visibility at all times vs. visibility when hovering would be an optimal solution.

It would be nice to have column headings for 'context' when in project view and 'project' when in context view. Naturally, I am able to remember what the entries are, just as I am able to remember that the due date is a due date and the start date is a start date. However, it is easier for my mind to have the visual indicator of a column heading. It is one less step to think about since when I am thinking 'what is this?' the answer is right in front of me. It is more than a mere aesthetic change in my eyes.

Other features I would like to see include:

-More iCal sync options. i.e. sync every X minutes. sync when iCal is brought into focus, etc

-Adjust the quick entry panel to allow for multiple quick entries. Sometimes I think through tasks as I type and it would be helpful to have the quick entry panel allow for multiple entries. Granted, this may be somewhat against the 'quick' part of the quick entry, but it certainly is 'easy entry.' This would be an awesome feature.

-A new view button to show tasks to complete 'Today, This Week, Next Week'. Basically, you could select the scope of your calendar to view in OmniFocus. I can sort of achieve this with the filters or by using iCal, but then I’d have to go back and forth from iCal to OmniFocus and that is a nuisance. A quick 'calendar button' next to the project and content views would be priceless.

-Is there a way to get rid of that save box so that it doesn’t pop up every time I make a change in OmniFocus? Or just make it less obtrusive. It is nice to know when it the document is being saved, but if we put it at the bottom of the left hand panel as the classic blue os x progress bar or something similar, it wouldn’t be so (to quote Futurama) ‘In your face interface.’

I'll try to send more feedback as I continue using your product. Law school starts soon and OmniFocus will make the perfect companion for my Franklin planner. Also, in future posts I will try not to ramble so much.

[Craig]

Originally Posted by strongmace

-Adjust the quick entry panel to allow for multiple quick entries. Sometimes I think through tasks as I type and it would be helpful to have the quick entry panel allow for multiple entries. Granted, this may be somewhat against the 'quick' part of the quick entry, but it certainly is 'easy entry.' This would be an awesome feature.

I think shift-return will allow you to enter a second (third, etc) quick entry.

[Ken Case]

Originally Posted by bepmail

A very important feature for me is syncing with my .mac account. I want to use it at home and work.

Of course! I want to use OmniFocus at home and at work as well, so I synchronize my OmniFocus document between my computers right now (using the same techniques as I use to synchronize other documents between my computers).

I agree that it would be great to add automatic synchronization (and even more interesting, automatic merging when you've made changes on multiple computers without synchronizing between each change), but I'm not convinced that .Mac is the best way to do that. (It's easy to implement simple synchronization with .Mac, but it's not easy to make sure that the synchronizing process won't ever lose or corrupt any data, especially when you have as complicated a schema as OmniFocus does.)

Our file format is designed with this goal in mind (it's one of the reasons we write changes as individual XML transactions), but our first goal is to get OmniFocus working as a reliable single-document system (before trying to make it a reliable distributed-document system, which is a research problem of its own).

(It's probably also worth pointing out that we currently do synchronize with your .Mac task list as well as providing a web interface for remote access. But I know that's not the same thing as running OmniFocus on multiple computers, which is why I started off noting that I do exactly that right now.)

Originally Posted by jelmore

1) I agree that the Filter/View ribbon at the top of the page doesn't have the right UI, it feels like it should be column headings.

We don't have column headings because the columns vary from row to row. (Inbox items have an extra "project" column; projects don't have a "context" column.)

* The search bar should clear itself when you change focus or switch views, so people don't end up unintentionally hiding stuff.

I don't think we should clear it automatically (forcing you to reenter your search string each time you look somewhere else for the same thing), but it should be more obvious that it's happening. We have some ideas about drawing more attention to the search field when it's active which should help this.

* Using the Add Action (Ctrl-Cmd-N) function in Project View doesn't do anything when you do not have a Project selected.

We'll fix this.

* If you hit the Delete key one time too many in the Quick Entry box, it deletes the new task and there's no way to get it back without closing and reopening the Quick Entry box.

We're considering making the Delete key stick within the current focused field, but I thought I should also point out that Undo (Command-Z) works everywhere, including in Quick Entry.

3) The more I think about it, the more I dislike the new Quick Entry function that allows you to skip the Inbox and drop Tasks directly into a Context or Project, and hope the original behavior is the default. The capturing stage and the processing stage are not the same thing, and you can bog yourself down if you find yourself wrestling with what context or project a quick entry needs to be in.

Even with the new default behavior, items still go to your inbox by default; they only go straight to a project or context if you stop and assign one to them. If you don't want to think about that yet (and I often don't), you can just skip those fields.

Hope this helps!

[jelmore]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

We don't have column headings because the columns vary from row to row. (Inbox items have an extra "project" column; projects don't have a "context" column.)

I should have been more clear; I was saying that the ribbon looks like it should be column headings at first glance, not that I wanted column headings (for the reasons you cite).

Originally Posted by Ken Case

I don't think we should clear it automatically (forcing you to reenter your search string each time you look somewhere else for the same thing), but it should be more obvious that it's happening. We have some ideas about drawing more attention to the search field when it's active which should help this.

I'll be interested to see what you come up with.

Originally Posted by Ken Case

We're considering making the Delete key stick within the current focused field, but I thought I should also point out that Undo (Command-Z) works everywhere, including in Quick Entry.

I think, as a psuedo-dialog box, that Delete should not kill that field, but it didn't occur to me to try Undo. Awesome!

Originally Posted by Ken Case

Even with the new default behavior, items still go to your inbox by default; they only go straight to a project or context if you stop and assign one to them. If you don't want to think about that yet (and I often don't), you can just skip those fields.

As long as I can set the behavior to always go to Inbox, I'll be happy.

Originally Posted by Ken Case

Hope this helps!

It does! Now if you guys can fix the bug where tasks with no project do not show up in Context View that I mentioned elsewhere, I'll be happy.

[pjc]

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

I'm not clear on your objection to the Sorting button in the view bar. Is the problem not being able to do multi-column or reversed sorting?

That's part of the problem. But the other part is that the current view bar overloads non-column-header functionality (i.e. filtering) with column-header functionality (i.e. sorting), which contributes to the visual and cognitive similarity to column headers -- which is what most people (that are complaining about the view bar) are complaining about.

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

I could live with column headers, but have no need for them--seems like wasted screen space and noise to me.

They're usually the proper place to put sorting, as that's the standard UI place to put it. They also allow for reverse sorting, sorting by multiple columns (primary/secondary), etc.

Ken Case mentioned that the reason they haven't used column headers so far is that OF doesn't "the columns vary from row to row. (Inbox items have an extra "project" column; projects don't have a "context" column.)".

This does present an interesting challenge. The Inbox only needs the "Project" column so that you can directly enter the project of an item in the box. The projects obviously don't need a project column. So what column header would you draw? Also, the current sorting drop-down lists criteria that aren't among the visible columns. So relegating sorting to column headers loses some functionality -- so I may concede that column headers aren't really practical. (And it's hard to change from sorted to unsorted using column headers.)

But please don't take away the view bar. It's a beautifully dense and feature packed UI element.

And that's really its greatest flaw (aside from its overwhelming resemblance to column headers). While density can wonderful for conveying information, it should generally be avoided for pointer-based (i.e. mouse, trackpad) manipulation. In a densely-packed clickable UI, your targets are too small, it's too easy to miss and hit another element, etc. It also shares the negative of menus -- namely that you can't see the available options (or their target boxes) until you click. Combine that with the small target size, and tweaking a number of the filter settings requires a startling amount of dexterity.

Time how long it takes you to tweak your filter settings. Now compare that to the direct manipulation UI that Spotlight provides. I can adjust all four settings with 4 fast clicks -- made faster because I can see my next target and start moving again as soon as I click. With the menus, your mind has to pause after the first click, find the target, then you can start moving to the target. You can look ahead for the next drop-down, but again, you'll have to wait for it to draw before you can look for and move toward your next target. That's a lot of latency.

Again, I apologize for pointing to Spotlight for any discussion of good UI, but it does at least get this aspect right. (On the other hand, it puts the scrollbar in the wrong place -- the content scrolls, but the sidebar doesn't. But for fun, try making your Spotlight window very short -- then the scrollbar does control the sidebar, but at a different rate than the results pane!)

Yes, the sidebar "wastes" a lot of screen real estate, but it conveys all the filtering you information you need at once, and very cleanly. But that's why I'd suggest making it a hidable UI element. And besides, there's more horizontal screen real estate than there is vertical -- you can more readily spare the pixels on the side than you can above or below.

The major obstacles I see to using a Spotlight-like sidebar are:

1) If you simply need to see what the current state of filtering is, it takes up a lot of space -- in contrast, the view bar is very succinct. And if you're going to have a view bar, it's generally a good idea to allow direct manipulation of it, as the current scheme does.

2) The sheer number of options in each drop-down could cause information overload in a sidebar.


So here's my new suggestion, partly based on what dduff617 and Leonardo said previously:

Add a "View" inspector, somewhat modeled after the Spotlight sidebar. Here are the benefits:

1) This leaves you your ultra-compact UI.

2) It also allows those who want to to get rid of the View bar (and all the confusion it creates due to its similarity to column headers) and still be able to view/adjust the filtering/sorting settings. Given what Ken said about column headers, hiding the View bar is the only resolution I can see to this issue. Although, I'm pondering dduff617's suggestion to put more of a break between the view bar and the projects/context/tasks below it -- that may help as well.

3) It also allows for fast selection of sort/filtering criteria, by showing all available options for a category when you expand the category. (This is the part that's modeled after Spotlight's UI: show all the options in that category, with the currently selected setting highlighted.)

4) Using Omni's usual collapsible Inspector panes, you can reduce the information overload by expanding only the categories you want to manipulate.

I was originally thinking of using a hideable sidebar or drawer for this, but the collapsible UI in the Inspector panes makes them more appealing.

Thoughts? It still feels like this isn't the ideal solution -- it feels like there's a big unsolved UI problem with filtering generally -- even aside from the view bar, people have mentioned confusion due to the search field filtering their tasks without their noticing. And it still seems inelegant to splat sorting in with filtering.

[strongmace]

Originally Posted by Craig

I think shift-return will allow you to enter a second (third, etc) quick entry.

You are correct. Thanks!

[MEP]

Originally Posted by pjc

Add a "View" inspector, somewhat modeled after the Spotlight sidebar. Here are the benefits:

Please don't take this advice.

1) This leaves you your ultra-compact UI.

Our definitions of "compact" are apparently incompatible. For some reason I don't consider extra windows and dialogs cluttering up the landscape compact. And speaking of extra windows, if I have two OF windows open, how are my view bar settings in each window reflected? The title bar is nice, but the view bar is nicer. Inspectors would suck for this.

2) It also allows those who want to to get rid of the View bar (and all the confusion it creates due to its similarity to column headers) and still be able to view/adjust the filtering/sorting settings.

I am not confused by the view bar in the slightest (as has already been stated). I do not associate it with column headers because it does not look anything at all like a header. The only thing it has in common with column headers is it's location.

3) It also allows for fast selection of sort/filtering criteria, by showing all available options for a category when you expand the category. (This is the part that's modeled after Spotlight's UI: show all the options in that category, with the currently selected setting highlighted.)

There is nothing really simpler than having the filter/sort criteria right next to the thing you are filtering. It's also great how I can glance right at the same spot (directly above my data) to see how it is filtered.

4) Using Omni's usual collapsible Inspector panes, you can reduce the information overload by expanding only the categories you want to manipulate.

Sounds like the interface for MS Office. This has inconvenience and confusion written all over it.

Thoughts? It still feels like this isn't the ideal solution -- it feels like there's a big unsolved UI problem with filtering generally -- even aside from the view bar, people have mentioned confusion due to the search field filtering their tasks without their noticing. And it still seems inelegant to splat sorting in with filtering.

I disagree with everything in this paragraph. The current solution is fine. And putting sorting and filtering in the same spot makes perfect sense as they both directly impact what you're looking at right now (and people frequently use them both at the same time so putting them in different places is just annoying).

For Ken Case:

My vote is for leaving the view bar exactly as it is and making the name "filter bar" again like it used to be. I also take issue with the statements that "most people" are confused by or are complaining about the filter bar. Perhaps a poll is in order.